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Posts Tagged ‘mystical’
Thou art the sky and the deep sea (Rumi)
When you fall asleep,
you go from the presence of yourself
into your own true presence.
You hear something
and surmise that someone else in your dream
has secretly informed you.
You are not a single “you.”
No, you are the sky and the deep sea.
Your mighty “Thou,” which is nine hundredfold,
is the ocean, the drowning place
of a hundred “thou’s” within you.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: mystic, mystical, poem, Poetry, Rumi, sufi, Sufism
Kabir, Bulleh and Lalon - Petals of a mystic lotus
Also published in the Weekly Friday Times July 24 issue
The subcontinent during the 15th century witnessed the coming of age of a process that started brewing with the arrival of Central Asian Sufis, those eternal travellers who arrived in India with a message of Islam and mystic love. When Sufi thought, an off-shore spiritual undercurrent to the rise of Islam, met its local hosts, the results were terrific. There was no shortage of fundamentalists and communalists in that cultural landscape; and the gulf between alien rulers and the native subjects was a stark reality as well.
Nevertheless, a synthesis of sorts was navigated by hundreds of yogis, Sufis and poets of South Asia. Very much a people’s movement from below, the Bhakti movement articulated a powerful vision of tolerance, amity and co-existence that remains relevant today. This is many centuries before the suave, Western-educated intelligentsia coined the “people-to-people” contact campaigns. Yes, much has been lost in the tumultuous 20th century and perhaps these histories are irreversible. But a vast and complex common ground was nurtured by mystic poets of northern India, now comprising India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Bengal, Bhakti, Buddhism, Bulleh Shah, Hindusim, Islam, Kabir, Kasur, Lalon Shah, lotus, Music, mystic, mystical, Mysticism, sufi, Sufism, Tagore
The Veil - Attar
by Farid al-Din ‘Attar (1142-1220)
1
We are the Magians of old,
Islam is not the faith we hold;
In irreligion is our fame,
And we have made our creed a shame.
2
Now to the tavern we repair
To gamble all our substance there,
Now in the monastery cell
We worship with the infidel.
3
When Satan chances us to see
He doffs his cap respectfully,
For we have lessons to impart
To Satan in the tempter’s art.
4
We were not in such nature made
Of any man to be afraid;
Head and foot in naked pride
Like sultans o’er the earth we ride.
5
But we, alas, aweary are
And the road is very far;
We know not by what way to come
Unto the place that is our home.
6
And therefore we are in despair
How to order our affair
Because, wherever we have sought,
Our minds were utterly distraught.
7
When shall it come to pass, ah when,
That suddenly, beyond our ken,
We shall succeed to rend this veil
That hath our whole affair conceal?
8
What veil so ever after this
Apparent to our vision is,
With the flame of knowledge true
We shall consume it through and through.
9
Where at the first in that far place
We come to the world of space,
Our soul by travail in the end
To that perfection shall ascend.
10
And so shall ‘Attar Shattered be
And, rapt in sudden ecstasy,
Soar to godly vision, even
Beyond the veils of earth and heaven.
Translated by A. J. Arberry
Tags: Fariduddin Attar, mystic, mystical, Persian, Poetry, sufi, Sufism, veil
mystical expressionism and Jamali’s art
Jamali is a contemporary artist of Pakistani origin. It was a delight to have discovered his artistic vision.
Mystical expressionism is a new mode of art-making that combines the scientific insights of our new age with humankind’s ancient wisdom. Obeying the dream guide who set him on the path to art, Jamali himself has named his life’s work Art & Peace.
The source of Jamali’s art and his life lies in the primordial spiritual traditions of the East. In his birthplace Peshawar, the Asian crossroads city, Jamali drank in Buddhist, Hindu, and Sufi ideas of the sacredness of being. He spent years of his youth with a mysterious desert people who still respect the shaman’s powers. But he also studied modern physics and engineering. Jamali is the first to incorporate the paradoxes of quantum mechanics into contemporary art.
Read more here
Tags: art, expressionism, florida, Jamali, mystical, peshawar, US